Energy is one of the most central and elusive concepts in physics. It appears everywhere — conserved, transformed, exchanged — and yet its definition remains surprisingly abstract. Unlike mass or charge, energy is not a substance or a property. It’s a number, calculated from the state of a system.
So what, then, is energy?
From a relational ontology, energy is not a thing possessed or transferred. It is not a causal agent. Rather, energy is best understood as a measure of systemic tension: a scalar index of how a relational configuration resists or enables transformation under constraint.
1. Classical Views: Stored and Transferred Substance
In classical mechanics:
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Energy is often imagined as a stored substance — kinetic energy in motion, potential energy in position,
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Systems exchange energy through work and heat, preserving the total amount,
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This implies a world of interacting objects where energy is passed around like a fluid.
But this metaphor breaks down when applied to quantum phenomena — where discrete transitions and contextual dependencies undermine the idea of continuous energy flow.
2. Energy as a Relational Quantity
In the relational framework:
Energy is not something “in” a system — it is the system, viewed through the lens of tension and possibility.
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A high-energy state is not “more full” but more constrained — more internal tension, more resistance to resolution,
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A low-energy state is one where coherence is easy — the system more readily actualises,
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Transitions between energy states are not transfers but reconfigurations of systemic constraint.
In this view, energy measures how difficult it is for a system to settle — a proxy for relational strain.
3. No Transfer, Only Reorganisation
This means we must rethink common images of energy transfer:
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There is no “unit of energy” that travels from one part to another,
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There is only change in configuration, such that the total systemic tension remains coherent.
For example:
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When a photon is absorbed by an atom, what changes is not that energy “enters” the atom,
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But that the relational structure of atom+field actualises a new coherence — one that conforms to conservation principles but does not require a substance to move.
4. Conservation Reframed
Even conservation laws are not about bookkeeping of substance:
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They express the invariance of systemic constraint across transformation,
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Conservation of energy means that the overall relational tension is preserved, even as it is redistributed or re-expressed.
Thus:
Energy is not a currency. It is a symmetry in the relational structure of becoming.
This aligns with Noether’s theorem in physics, which links conservation laws to symmetry. In a relational ontology, symmetries reflect topological invariants in potential — not properties of objects, but regularities in the constraints of actualisation.
5. Why Energy Feels “Real”
Despite being non-material, energy feels real because:
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It correlates with change: more energy, more transformation,
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It constrains possibility: energy thresholds limit what can occur,
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It shapes measurement: we design detectors to track energetic reconfiguration.
But these features are just manifestations of deeper relational tensions. What we’re observing is not “stuff moving,” but coherence resolving under constraint.
Closing
In the relational view:
Energy is not a force, not a particle, not a fluid.It is the signature of strain in a field of potential.A scalar trace of how tightly the system holds itself together.
To ask what energy is, is to ask how the world tenses itself toward coherence — and how that tension gives rise to the phenomena we observe as motion, transformation, and resistance.
In the next post, we’ll tackle another central idea through this lens: What is measurement, if not the reading of an independent state?
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